Carlo Scorza

Carlo Scorza (15 June 1897-23 December 1988) was the Secretary of the National Fascist Party of Italy from 19 April to 27 July 1943, succeeding Aldo Vidussoni. He was the second most-powerful man in Italy under Benito Mussolini for a few months, before the fascists were overthrown.

Biography
Carlo Scorza was born on 15 June 1897 in Paola in the Province of Cosenza in the southern Kingdom of Italy. Scorzas served with the Bersaglieri during World War I and later joined Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party during their rise after the war. He aided in violence against socialists and communists in Lucca in central Italy, and in 1931 he became a member of the Direttorio of the NFP. He was dismissed from the leadership of the party after he disagreed with the Azione Catolica and began to be very active about his views. He proceeded to serve in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War in 1936 and the Spanish Civil War in 1936-39.

In 1943, as Italy fell under attack from the Allied Powers in North Africa and the Balkans during World War II, Scorza was promoted to become the Secretary of the National Fascist Party. The carabinieri arrested Mussolini and Scorza in a coup against the fascist government on 27 July 1943, with Scorza being captured in the Italian Social Republic in northern Italy. He fled to Argentina and returned to Italy in 1955 after he was granted an amnesty, dying in Florence on 23 December 1988.